I don’t want to write this.

I thought I could burn this draft once the Twitter acquisition was signed.

…but Twitter is my favorite social media site. No where else can you interact with minor celebrities like you can on Twitter. I’ve gleaned more knowledge from random programmers I don’t follow on Twitter than I have from conferences.

…and someone else’s bad opinions to monetize Twitter leaked from their drafts.

First, Twitter needs to make more money off of their current user base. It’s been stuck at 300 million active users for as long as I can remember. They’re not growing their ad revenue anytime soon. One problem is most people are poor. Millenials haven’t recovered from the 2010 recession, and we’re already jumping into the next one. Twitter needs a way to monetize users while ensuring the experience mostly remains free.

Every day I see public figures begging for a blue checkmark from Twitter support. People want something. It’s exclusive. It’s obvious. Charge for the blue checkmark. People give you proof of a government ID and $5 a month and they join the protected class. Twitter can still gift blue checks to journalists, politicians, and other users at-risk of impersonation.

Give blue check users additional controls to limit how other users interact with their tweets and everyone will want to be a blue check. Imagine celebrities stopping harassment by only allowing blue checks to quote tweet, retweet, or reply to their tweets. Blocks mean something now: no more coordinated harassment campaigns chasing users off Twitter.

A common form of spam is a blue check changing their username and profile picture to match a celebrity and then promote scams in their comments. I think most of these accounts are compromised. If they aren’t charging $5 and having a user’s government ID is a huge

Twitter is the only social network that allows porn and nudity on the platform (RIP Tumblr). Gate nudity with the blue check mark. You get additional revenue from users making money on your platform and you get proof the user is of age.

Next, segment your users.

Celebrities and small businesses need multiple people to manage their account. Sell that. There are startups that offer that feature. Those startups should not exist. Account management should be part of your core product. I don’t know what’s reasonable, $30/month for five users to own an account?

Do cable companies and airlines pay for their Twitter accounts? They should, at least $100k/year. If they’re using it as a support platform, they should pay. Add an Enterprise tier with everything they need, more users, a ticket queuing system, new APIs to connect it to Front, whatever they need.

Lastly, the best innovations have come from outside the company. Give users better API access to Twitter and Twitter features. Let users generate their own API tokens and do whatever they want with it, as long as they’re paying for the blue checkmark. If they’re already paying you, do you care if they’re using a third-party Twitter client?

I use a third party client. I wish I had polls and spaces, but the experience is too good to switch. Plus, I don’t see ads! Open up the API. Create a new version of the API every year. Developer momentum will not be slowed by supporting the last two years’ versions.

So yeah, make me the god king of Twitter. I don’t want the job, but there’s no other tech company I care about this much.